Mirror, Mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest Blog of all?

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This post is about Blog presentation. And frankly I’m a bit nervous to be writing about this topic. Let’s face it, the look and feel of your blog is a very personal thing. And many of you are Scrapbookers so it’s even more of a personal thing. So let me state up front:

This post is aimed at highlighting points to consider if your presentation is focussed on your audience rather than on your own preferences. If you write your blog purely for your own purposes and are not really concerned about ‘reader friendly’ aspects then this post is probably not going to interest you.

Having read a number of articles on blog design from professional bloggers like Yaro Starak and Darren Rowse I thought it might be helpful to pull some of the fundamental items on presentation together.

Now these guys blog about blogging with a focus on making money from blogging. I realise that this is not what most of us are about, so I’m not advocating that we all jump on their ‘business focussed’ bandwagon in how we design our own blogs. But many of the fundamental presentation principles are worth considering for our own personal blogs if we want them to appeal to a broader audience.

The majority of us use a template or blog skin chosen from a limited range provided by our blog platform provider. I have recently moved my blog to my own Scraps of Mind domain where I have a huge range of templates to choose from and I’m blessed with a daughter who can hack the code to tweak them further to suit my needs. But I realise that most of you just have the free templates to choose from with a limited amount of customisation available to you.

Presentation factors to consider:

1. Contrast.Try to ensure there is good contrast between your text colour and your background. For some reason black text on a white background is far easier to read than white text on a black background. And some of the other colour combinations in the various templates can also be challenging to read. You need a crisp contrast between background and text.
2. Font. Try to ensure that you choose a font style and size that is easy to read on a screen. The prevailing wisdom says that serif fonts (ones with the little sticking out bits on the letters, like Times New Roman) are better for reading on paper and sans-serif (clean lines like Arial or Lucida) are easier to read on the screen. As a visually challenged person I do find it a struggle to read the text on many blogs I visit. And I assume I am not alone.
   My ‘old’ Scraps of Mind blog had a larger font than my current template. I’m still a bit iffy on whether the reduced font size is a good idea. I’d love to know if any of my readers would prefer me to upsize my font again or if this one is OK for you.
3. White space. It is a whole lot easier to read a long post if there are some ‘visual pauses’ in it. Use white space to create these pauses and break your your text to make it easier on the eye. Your reader will have a better chance of absorbing your information if their eyes can take it in through smaller chunks. So make sure there are gaps between your paragraphs. And try to keep to short paragraphs where possible.
4. Use graphics to break up your text. For many of our posts this is not too difficult, given that most of us are into scrapbooking and photography. But sometimes your post doesn’t have a picture to break it up. I have found the blockquote feature on my template to be quite useful to bring a little visual variety into my ‘all text’ posts. Dot points are another tool you can use or even some careful use of bold or italics. The eye loves variety. As long as you don’t go overboard you can bring a bit of this into the most wordy of posts.
5. Sidebar. Whether your template has one or two sidebars. Give some thought to how your arrange your sidebar widgets. The information you consider most important should go ‘above the fold’. Above the fold refers to the area that your reader sees when they first load your blog; before they start scrolling. What you consider to be the most important information may be different to someone else but try to ensure that it sits above the fold in your side bar.

A good test is to think about which blogs that you find easy to read and think about why that is so. I hope this is one of them. Although there’s still a long journey to go to improve it. Any suggestions for improvement from you would be more than welcome.

Please feel free to add your own additions to this list on improving blog presentation in the comments. I’m sure all readers (including myself) would appreciate them.

So to sum up. Your blog is about you. It belongs to you and needs to be what you want. But if you are seeking to make it easier for your readers to read your content then it might be worthwhile giving some of these points your consideration.

Other related posts:

Blog Post Titles - make them meaningful
Link up your Blog
Blogging 101

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Words to Live by

In the depth of Winter,

I finally learned that within me there lay

       an invincible Summer.

Albert Camus

It is very cold here. This is a nice thought to help get through the Winter

Hi Fives about Me

Antoinette from Sparky’s Scratches tagged me for this meme. So I’ll give it a go and try to make it as interesting as I can.

INSTRUCTIONS: Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so:

1. BlondeMomBlog
2. Holly’s Corner
3. Daddy Forever
4. Sparky’s Scratches
5. Scraps of Mind

Next select five people to tag:

1. Becky
2. Sharon
3. Vicky
4. Andrea
5. Kelly

What were you doing 10 years ago?
Working as an IT Quality Manager for the same teleco company that I still work for and planning a surprise trip back to Ireland to gatecrash my cousin’s wedding. For the record, it was an absolute hoot and one of the best holidays I’ve ever had.

What were you doing 1 year ago?
Starting to get interested in the whole blogging thing. Getting into digital scrapping. Managing a large portfolio of IT Applications for the same telco company as above and wishing I was planning a trip somewhere (I usually take a realy good trip over to Europe every second year or so and that ‘off’ year is a killer)

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Dark Chocolate
2. Anything covered in chocolate
3. Greek or Lebonese dips with bread
4. Did I mention Chocolate?
5. Pringles chips

Five songs that you know all the lyrics to:
1. Danny Boy
2. Chase the Ghosts Away - Ross Ryan
3. Cat’s in the Cradle - Harry Chapin (my guide to raising my daughter, as in what can happen if you don’t pay attention to the really important things)
4. Advance Australia Fair - National Anthem
5. The Lumberjack Song - Monty Python

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:
1. Travel - All over Europe with no time constraints. And some detours to Egypt and Russia
2. Invest the balance and live off the earnings because…..
3. I’d take early retirement!!!!!
4. Then I’d do some volunteer work for charities
5. And spend the rest of my time doing whatever I like.

Five bad habits:
1. Eating too much chocolate
2. Inadvertently driving my opinion too hard and making people feel uncomfortable. I do try to curb this but sometimes my personality gets in the way.
3. Procrastination!
4. Taking too long in the shower. In a ‘water restriction’ environment that’s a bad habit I’m trying hard to break
5. Other than those four things, I’m perfect in every way!!?!!!

Five things you like doing:
1. Playing with my blog and reading others.
2. Scrapbooking (digital and traditional)
3. Going to live performances. The atmosphere at a theatre, concert hall, folk festival or pub gig is a world away from listening to a CD or watching a DVD.
4. Helping people to bring out their strengths. I really enjoy mentoring roles and helping people to develop themselves. Most of us (me included) constantly underestimate our capabilities and usually need someone else to point them out to us and ‘prove’ we’re good enough.
5. Spending Mother/Daughter time with Seona. Always enjoyed this but even more so now that she lives in Sydney.

Five things you would never wear again:
1. Bikini, sometimes you have to admit it’s time to move on.
2. Super high heels. I’m 5′2″ but I have a tall personality. I’ll settle for that.
3. Crop tops. Wore these in the 70s (like Antoinette) and hated them then. But young and fashion driven…what can I say? I need to keep my mid-section warm or I tend to get sick. I was totally distraught to see them back in fashion a couple of years ago. Thank heavens I’m into style rather than fashion now. Besides I have the wrong sort of mid section nowadays.
4. Leisure suits
5. Choker necklaces

Five favorite toys:
1. Computer, and its close friends Printer and Scanner.
2. Photoshop Elements. Just luurve that program
3. WordPress. Love playing around with my blog.
4. PDA with keyboard attachment. Makes keeping a travel diary to turn into journaling for scrapbook layouts so much easier.
5. My camera. I’m just a ‘point and click’ merchant but I now have a camera that helps overcome my wobbly technique so I really love that.

Other related posts

It’s all about me
Tag, you’re it!

Scrap in Style TV

SISters are doin’ it for themselves.

For those who haven’t come across it before I just have to share this really cool site that Martha put me on to. It’s called Scrap in Style TV, it started up this year and it’s one of the slickest sites I’ve seen in a long while.

SIS is a flash based website, so there are things jumping out and popping up all over the place. Personally I find that cute the first time but a bit tiresome after that. But that’s just a small personal niggle of mine. The rest of the features on this site easily help me to get over that.

The website is run by Jeanette Herdman who’s realising a dream in this site and it has some pretty spiffy features. Including an excellent gallery with some great mouse-over features to let you see the enlarged layouts without having to click open new windows. Although it’s primarily a traditional scrapping site there’s a section for digi scrappers too and layouts in the digi gallery are also part of the main gallery too. Which is a good thing because there seems to be a growing trend on many sites towards segregating the two types of scrapbooking which can only be destructive to the hobby. The products in the boutique seem to be interesting packages of limited edition products and a vibrant and dynamic messageboard promotes a strong community spirit.

But best of all there’s the TV Show!

Scrap In Style TV is the result of a dream…a really big dream, like a “I’m gonna run for senator someday” kind of dream. It was something I really never thought would actually happen. Developing and hosting a TV show that combines my passion for scrapbooking, with (ok, confession time) my love of performing and being in front of the camera?

Jeanette Herdman

These ten minute long web based TV shows are really really good (at least the ones that I have watched so far). Once you register with the site you get access to them all and there are 17 at the time of writing and more being produced regularly. And these are great shows. Despite being produced on what is obviously a tight budget they more than make up for that in varied, innovative and creative content.

The episodes are much more than graphic tutorials they have a lifestyle/entertainment quality to them too. The five I have watched so far have covered a scrapbook challenge to do with a friend, making a custom planner (and then piling into the car with five kids to hunt down the recipient and present her with it), two interviews with prominent scrappers (although Jeanette’s lack of interviewing experience shows through here, but this will hopefully be overcome as she gets a few more under her belt) and, my personal favourite, The Acrylic Paint Olympics.

Hint: Streaming video through the web can be a bit clunky if your connection isn’t super fast. So a bit of a tip I would give you is when you click on an episode pause it for a couple of minutes whilst it is buffering, then when you press play it will flow smoothly and not keep stopping and starting in the jerky way that you sometimes get with this medium.

So I heartily recommend you check out Scrap in Style, register to become one of the SISters and, at the very least, watch the great scrappin’ lifestyle TV episodes.

Other related posts:

A Toast to Scrap Girls
Paper Wishes Weekly Webisodes

Published…for the very first time.

Those of you who have had your work published in ‘real life’ magazines can hopefully still remember the thrill of actually seeing your own layout staring back at you from the glossy pages of a big name magazine for the very first time. So I hope you will be indulgent whilst I just take a short moment to say

YIPPEEEEE!!!!!

whilst jumping up and down and waving my hands in the air.

A thread that was started a couple of months ago on the Scrap Girls message board encouraged us to share some constructive feedback so we could submit our layouts for publication. I had never done this before but I thought, hey why not? I was completely blown away when the very first layout I have ever submitted was accepted by Scrapbooking Memories (Australian version). I was also stunned at how excited I felt about that.

And now the magazine is finally in print and my layout is enshrined for posterity (well for me to gloat over in future years at least).

So to celebrate this momentous occasion I made this ‘layout of the layout’ using the same template and fabulous Art Journal Kit from Scrap Girls that I used in the original, but giving them a different look. And I thought I would share the ragged edge curvy template I made for the layout with you as a Freebie.
You can download here. I’ve saved it as a .PNG so it is portable across a number of graphics editing programs.

Instructions

(written for PSE but should be easy to follow in other editing programs):

1. Create a new 12×12 inch 300dpi document to work in so you don’t accidentally save your changes over an original file.
2. Open the 3 template files into your graphics editing program. Decide whether you want the curve vertical or horizontal and rotate the template files 90 degrees if required (>Image>Rotate>90 degrees left or right).
3. Click on File 1 and drag from your editing window into the new document you have created using the Move tool (Arrow icon at the top of the tool bar).
4. Open the patterned paper you have chosen for your foreground and drag it onto your document.
5. Press Ctrl G, and then Ctrl E and your paper is cut to the shape of your template.
6. Drag your photo or photo’s into your document and then in the layers palette drag the photo layer(s) below your foreground paper layer.
7. Position your photo(s) to your liking.
8. Click on File 2 and drag from your editing window into your document. And in the layer palette position it above your photo(s) but below your foreground patterned paper.
9. You can now drag the curved side in as far as you like to cover as much of your photo edges as your choose.
10. Now drag a coordinating paper into your document, position it directly above the File 2 layer in the layer palette and press Ctrl G, then Ctrl E.
11. Repeat Steps 8, 9 and 10 for File 3 using the same coordinating paper.
12. If your photos have not covered the centre portion of your layout, either drag another paper into your document, positioning it at the bottom of the layer stack, or fill the paint bucket with a coordinating colour and dump it onto the background layer at the bottom of your layer stack. You can play with some effects to get some interesting texture on your background if you choose.
13. Add some drop shadows, a title and a couple of embellishments and your layout is complete.

Hope you enjoy.

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Other related Posts:

Scrapbooking Tips & Techniques - The Visual Triangle
Scrapbooking Tips & Techniques - Upsizing Photos
Scrapbooking Tips & Techniques - Printing your Digital Layouts